


Garden Of Eden

by PaxVobis



Series: Original Album Series [3]
Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: All Of Which Is, Band Break Up, Bigotry & Prejudice, Bipolar Disorder, Blow Jobs, Canon Trans Character, Courtroom Drama, Cultural References, Drug Addiction, Drugged Sex, Ear Piercings, Explicit References To Guns N Roses, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fake Songs, Fights, Hardcore, Heroin, Heroin Balls, Historical Accuracy, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Leading To Idiot Comments, Leading To Stereotyping, Los Angeles, M/M, Not an accident, Paranoia, Preklok, Racial Ignorance, Recovery, Rehabilitation, Snakes N' Barrels, Suicidal Thoughts, Trans Ignorance, Trans Male Character, Vaginal Sex, anger issues, suicide threat, trans pickles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 20:28:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10771842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaxVobis/pseuds/PaxVobis
Summary: Before Dethklok, Pickles faces a string of lawsuits from his old band in the wake of Snakes N Barrels' breakup.  Betrayed by his closest friends, he reflects on how the last few years fell apart under the evils of heroin, ex-wives and gig violence, and the only real rule of surviving rock stardom: never fuck your bandmates.R18+, explicit sex and heroin use, (trans) Pickles/Tony.





	Garden Of Eden

There was one rule to being in bands, and one rule only.  Pickles had survived the drugs.  He’d stolen girlfriends, blown managers, bogarted bongs, shared needles, trashed apartments, crashed cars, hit on sisters, puked on laps, bled out on bathroom floors, assaulted fans, smashed bottles into faces, and still he’d survived.  _Snakes N’ Barrels_ had survived.  There was only one thing that could destroy a band like no other.  One rule to never break.

The rule was: never, ever, ever fuck your bandmate.

Sitting in the witness box and staring back at Tony, and in front of him Tony’s lawyer, Pickles had never felt so certain of this fact.  It was, as the kids said, wicked fucked, suing your bandmates out of spite.  And also something something, hadn’t paid his wages for a while.  But uh, that wasn’t his fault man, Howie was supposed to be sorting that out – that’s what managers were for!  And besides, Tony had no case.  Pickles was paid the most because Pickles wrote all the songs and played guitar and piano and sang apart from those two tracks Tony had sang on and written and anyway they paid him for those and ANYWAY Pickles had to re-re-rerecord all of Tony’s bass after the overdose incident and then all of Candynose’s drum tracks after that catastrophic session for 'Water Horsey Blues' because the band was such a mess.  That’s why he’d fired Tony, that’s why he’d fired Candynose, that’s why he deserved four times the pay they got, and it was all fair, and _fuck_.  Why sue him out of spite?

Never, ever, ever fuck your bandmate.

Tony’s lawyer was a sleezeball.  Leaning over the attorney stand and trying to hold Pickles’ gaze; Pickles served him straight back, never looking away except to follow his own lawyer/manager, Lancelot Howard, rising from the bar to object.  Which he did often.  Kinda his thing.  Pickles liked the go-getter attitude, and especially liked to see Howie in court, even if that attitude had lead to some, let’s say, _embarrassing_ nights in the past.  Howie took care of him.  Sorted out the accounts, made sure there was coke in the greenroom, woke Pickles up on time and got him into a suit for court.  He felt, hands down, there was no way they could lose this case.  And even if so – Pickles would fight it out to the bitter end.

He delicately brushed off a red beard hair that despoiled his powder blue suit lapel, and sat up higher in his seat, daring Tony’s lawyer to try him with a pointed gaze.

“Mr Pickles, I’d like to talk to you about a song you wrote, ‘Dr. Brown’,” said the lawyer, and Pickles could feel his eyes tugging upwards, desperate to give an irritated roll of disapproval.  But he fought it, held the man’s gaze.  Just, _so predictable._   Howie had briefed him on this, and to get something past Howie you had to wake up at like... ten in the morning, maybe.  He wasn’t the earliest bird, you know, in terms of lawyers.  Just one prepared to stick his head deep into the mud to get at the late worms, an audacity and disregard for personal security that Pickles quite admired.

“Yep,” said Pickles, and brushed his long braids over his shoulder, and then stepped right into his own mouth: “You’re right.  I did write it.  All of it.”

“That’s interesting, Mr Pickles.  There’s a copy of the lyrics coming around to you now, could you read those out to us?”

Pickles watched the court officers pass the papers around, and Tony, at the desk across court, pick at the skin around his fingers.  Tony had gotten fat since the last time Pickles had seen him, which – mind you – was quite a time ago as the lawsuit got processed by the courts.  It’d been a while since he’d seen anyone other than Howie, really, because every time he tried, everyone else was always shooting up and he started to get the crawls. 

“Could you read out the pre-chorus for us, Mr Pickles?”

Pickles picked up the piece of paper, his lids low, and cleared his throat.  “Ya know, usually they pay me for a performance,” he quipped, but obliged anyway in a stringy monotone:

“ _I used to hit a li’l but a li’l ain’t enough_  
_So I hit him up for a little more_  
_A little goes a long way with your pedal to the metal_  
_I put the pedal down to the floor_  
  
_Before ya know what ya doin, a li’l is a lot_  
_And ya losin what ya had before_  
_And if a li’l goes a long way then a lot goes to hell_  
_And it takes you straight through the floor._

 _Yowsa._ ”

He looked back up at the lawyer, and watched the smirk worm across the guy’s face.  “Probably didn’t need that last part, Mr Pickles, but thank you for obliging me.”

“You’re welcome.”  Honestly, just reading that shit made his arms itch inside the suit.  The trackmarks had long healed up and it still got him.  In his arrogance, Pickles had assumed kicking the junk would be easy.  So easy even, _heh!_   But if he’d learned anything – anything other than not to fuck the people he worked with – it was that nothing was ever as easy as he’d thought it’d be.

He’d already relapsed a few times and the doctors got right up his ass every time.  Of late, he’d decided that the high wasn’t worth the grief they gave him, but ‘of late’ really just meant since he’d been taking these little pills – _naltrexone_ , Pickles was good at remembering drug names – which smothered the long, liquid high straight in his bloodstream.  They seemed to be doing something to his alcohol consumption too, like it took way, way, way more to get him drunk than it used to.  So the sooner he got off the horse, proper, for good, the sooner he could stop emptying his pockets at the liquor store.  More importantly, winning this case was worth more than shooting up, and he was determined to stick Tony in the fucking bin when it came to this.  If all his friends were going to _betray_ him, all three of those disgusting pigs looking at their feet, lined up behind the plaintiff’s table, then Pickles was going to keep his fists tight on those hundies, you dig?

Why did they want to sue him, anyway?  Pickles was a great, fun, happy dude and he only got angry sometimes and there must have been so many lies, so many whispers, _god_.  They’d fucking lived together.  They were basically his family, you know?  There wasn’t a day since like, fuckin... 1988 that he hadn’t seen them.  Why did it have to come to this?  Oh god, he’d fucking die to shoot up without pills.

“Mr Pickles, is it true that ‘Dr Brown’ is a slang term for heroin?” asked the lawyer, and Pickles breathed out through his nose, but otherwise contained himself.

“Wouldn’t know.”

“The Los Amigos Rehabilitation Centre released this pamphlet,” – the lawyer held it up – “Stating that Dr Brown, indeed, is a street term for heroin so the coincidence does seem uncanny, doesn’t it, Mr Pickles?”

Pickles raised his eyebrows a little, pursing his lips.  “Sure.  But, you know, in this business.  You pick up street words for things without even knowing what it means proper, anyway,” he explained, and sat back in his seat.

“What does ‘Dr Brown’ mean to you, Mr Pickles?”

Pickles breathed out again, casting his eyes down.  Brown, to him, was... well, it _was_ a doctor, you know.  He still remembered vividly sitting in that basement with Tony and Tony’s new friends, towards the end of mastering when they’d needed to get out of each other’s company, and the fits and the spoons had come out. 

Pickles had been in the fucking pits, at the very end of himself; he’d been telling himself, as soon as they’d released _Abuse Your Delusion_ , he was gonna kill himself.  He knew everyone hated him, he fucking knew it.  He knew he was an awful and hateful person, who destroyed everything he touched – even their shows dissolved into riots around him, fans wanted to consume his body and soul, rip it to shreds in the mosh and take him home in pieces.  He fucked up these girls, these beautiful girls who loved him, until he was crying and screaming and drinking again.  He’d tried everything, you know, he’d got the surgery, he’d healed up, he’d focused on the work, he’d made this lovely big album, he hadn’t been seeing any ladies and it was still, you know, so fucking awful, excruciating, crying in the shower cuz it hurt so bad.  He was a poison on the world and he made the lives of these people so much worse, so he was just gonna remove himself – as soon as the album came out, you know man, it was gonna be beautiful. 

He was so proud of that album, that huge, double volume album everyone was gagging waiting for.  You know when you could just feel something was gonna change the world.  All his hate and pain and rage had gone into that recording, and all his love too, you know, his envy and respect for the beautiful things, so acutely aware that he didn’t deserve them.  There were classics on that album and he knew it.  So it was gonna be perfect, they released them in July, and he was gonna shoot himself in the head in a hotel room just before.  Had the rifle and everything.  You couldn’t wish for better PR than a suicide.  The boys would be set for life, and the pain would stop, and everything would be right.

Tony asked him if he wanted a try, and Pickles had been like, fuck it.  I’m gonna go out anyway, so hit me up, dude.  And he did.  And it was so _nice,_ just melting into the couch beside him.  And no comedown, so the next time Tony had asked him to come out, Pickles had been right on his ankles.  Cuz why the hell not?  He didn’t know why heroin got such a bad rap, you know.  Shit was great.  And everything was fine until he got junk sick the first time, being in Boston for the album launch and out of his usual haunts, and had dragged his shaking, sweating, puking body out into the streets to find anyone who could fix him and Tony up.  He didn’t remember the rest of that night, only waking up next to Tony on the tour bus to Howie hitting them with a copy of the _Rolling Stone_.  The album had been launched, and the _Stone_ ’s editor had done the review.  Five stars.  All he’d written: 

_Was it worth the wait?  Yes._

Pickles thought maybe that had been the night he’d first fucked Tony, but he couldn’t remember so it didn’t count.  Tony didn’t remember either, or at least he said he didn’t, so doubly so.  If you fuck someone on the tour bus high on smack and no one’s there to witness it, does it even happen?  But you know, okay, he’d woken up naked to the waist and Tony had had his jeans down around his thighs, passed out in the narrow bed beside him.  And shit was sore – Tony was half-Black so, you know.  Probably.  There hadn’t been any cum in him or anything, though in hindsight Tony always found it hard to cum when he was loaded.  But uh... hindsight’s 20/20, you dig?  Whatever.

He didn’t think he’d be the type to fuck a dude recreationally, especially a dude he knew, but it had – at that point – been a hell of a long time since he’d been with someone.  He’d been starved, obviously, and shit had happened.  Tony had always been a bit of a pansy so.  It made sense.

But they didn’t talk about it.  Pickles continued using heroin.  A doctor, like he said – it cured junk sickness, and it just made everything all fluid and nice and, like he said in the song the lawyer was dragging him through, he couldn’t even worry about things other than heroin no more.  Howie dragged him from hotel to hotel, he got on stage, he performed and everyone loved it and fought and ripped him apart.  He forgot to kill himself, so worried about his next hit, and the next thing he knew they had a new direction and an EP coming out, and six months had blurred past him.  Hanging off his mic stand on stage with that huge black shaggy jacket and sunglasses against the stage lights, the audience dragging on his levis and their mouths gnashing, like they were gonna pull him apart and eat, feast on his junk weak body, and he didn’t care, loved it even, so long as he had brown.  Tony looking like a god shirtless, in his little black shorts and top hat.  They were gonna play ‘Maddog’.  It was gonna be amazing. 

And suddenly he could feel a camera, stealing part of his soul with a blaze of white light.  And his throat had closed up.  His heart had swollen up like it was gonna pop.  Like he was gonna have an aneurysm, standing there in the stage lights.  He could hear Snazz, talking into his mic.  _Pickles, hey, bro.  Pickles.  Earth callin’ Pickles, bro._

 _Git that,_ he’d managed, pointing a hand covered in heavy rings at the camera, _Get that.  Take that thing.  Take it off him._ But security were just sneering at him. _Get it – FUCK.  I’LL GET IT MYSELF._

The blood had burst in his eyes, and Pickles had kicked the motherfucker’s camera straight into his mouth, smattering nasty red over his face from the force of it. _YOU MOTHERFUCKER,_ he’d screamed, and then been dragged into the pit by his cowboy boot, and there’d been hands all over him.  He’d tasted blood, not his own.  He was falling, falling into the hands, tearing at his muscles, ripping the clothes off his body.  Security.  Where were security?  Someone grabbing him by the throat, by the hair, pulling him off the floor and throwing his slight frame so that it hit the mosh’s barricade, the steel bar winding him as it punched into his ribs.

He grabbed it automatically and alighted, tripping back onto the stage again and grabbing the mic.  _Jesus fuck, what is wrong with you, St Louis?  Y’almost kill a guy and ain’t no one gonna come save my ass?  Fuck this, show’s over!_   And he threw the mic at the floor, and left.

The fans destroyed the amphitheatre.  Tore it to the ground.  Howie only just managed to chuck them into the bus and yell at their driver to cross the state line in time to escape the howling police sirens, seeing the riot spill out onto the streets as they pulled out with bottles smashing against the windows.  Pickles had yanked one open to throw shit back, a full bottle of champagne that smashed in the parking lot in a fizzing explosion of froth and expensive booze, but then Tony had dragged him back into the bus and held him down on the floor until the rage died down again.  Face down on the floor with Tony lying shirtless on top of him, panting and bleeding out his nose and breathing bus carpet.  Feeling like he was dying.  And that was the first time brown had let him down.  And what it had come to mean: splitting, screaming rage, or being held down by Tony.  You know.  Because the first time was not the last time.  It was never, ever the last time.

“It just means, like, something that ya really want,” lied Pickles, gazing coolly at the lawyer, “Something that can fix all your problems.  Then you don’t need to worry no more.  It’s more of a, uh, fantasy, than a real thing.”

“Could that be heroin?” asked the lawyer, and Pickles gave a stiff shrug.

“I guess, sure, could be heroin.  Could be booze.  Could be money, could be sex, TV, could even be God, dude.  It’s whatever you want it to be.”  He jogged his legs irritably under the desk.  Be over, god damn it.  Just be over.  He knew it was only day one of cross-examination but... damn it, just _be over._

Being pinned down like that must have turned something in Pickles, but then, something had turned in general.  Heroin had stopped being fun, suddenly – well, it was still a good time, a fucking amazing time.  Pickles felt like a god onstage, with his shirt off and shining under the lights, his red hair hennaed dark and his makeup running down his face, and all those mouths so desperate to eat him, strip his skin from the bones.  But suddenly, like the wind had changed, although his tempers had always been easy to set off, he couldn’t hold it back any longer.  Someone said something and it just belched out of him, the insults, couldn’t hold it in.  The veins bursting behind his eyes and filling his head with blood, a rage not just consuming but homicidal.  He learned later that apparently, once you started to dig up the dosages, this stuff happened.  You know, you started hitting a little, then a little wasn’t enough, so you hit it up more and before you knew it, a little was a lot, and you were plunging down, down, straight into the devil’s lap.

_Yowsa._

Tony made a point of intervening.  Like Pickles, he’d nudged that edge, but he’d found ways to pull it back and tried to teach Pickles the same.  He’d step in when it was getting bad, pull Pickles into the greenroom and ply him with alcohol, sitting on the couch beside him and talking him down.  One thing had led to another, getting all mixed up between gentle talking and confessions of respect and Tony tying him off and loading the fit for him, so that he didn’t shoot too much – which he inevitably did, left to his own devices – and then he was lying smacked out on a bed in a hotel room in his underwear with Tony, shirtless, by his side, feeling really down and shooting the shit in a stoned slur, and Tony had looked real nice in the low light of the bedside lamp, and Tony had said he really _admired_ how Pickles stuck it out despite the loneliness, and how he always went all the way, and the next minute Tony’s lips were grazing over his fat feeling mouth, and his throat, and there was a hand down the front of his underwear, rough fingers rolling over his numb, stubby clit-dick and grinding deep into the swollen flesh.  Pickles found his hand on Tony’s cheek.  _Shit, Antonio.  Keep... keep doin’ that.  Keep goin’, dude.  Don’t stop._

Tony’s breath had been heavy in his ear, something like, _I’m sorry,_ and Pickles had mumbled something like, _Umm no?  No no.  Nothin’ to be sorry bout gawd... don’t, fuckin, stop._   Holding the bassist’s hand down on his crotch.  Tony had kissed him again, shaking a little and up on his arm.

 _I always thought you looked real great, smacked out.  Really like a chick._   The laughter had come out of Pickles like such a beautiful thing, like a moth unfurling from its cocoon, soft and alien.  Tony snorting back at him.  _Ain’t funny, bro!  You make me so hard, shit._

Pickles lost it giggling, putting his hands over his flushing face, his head stuck between his laughter and Tony shoving his rough fingers into his pussy arrogantly, the bassist’s tongue poking out of his mouth with concentration as he explored Pickles’ insides.  Pretty soon the laughter cut straight off, Pickles shutting his eyes tight and spreading his legs to let Tony get deeper.  _Aw, shit.  Awwww, shit, Tony.  Don’t stop or I’ll fuckin’ kill ya._

 _God, I wanna fuck you, Pickles_ , groaned Tony into his ear, and Pickles just trembled under his hands, his little twist of a grin making him feel filthy, solicitous.  Ignoring Tony probably fucking him on the tour bus, which might not even have happened, he hadn’t fucked a dude since he’d been living on the streets.  Which had been, what, five years ago.  Time went fast when you were living gig to gig, needle to needle.  Pickles put his thumb in his mouth and thoughtfully nipped the nail.

 _Yeh_ , he mumbled back, _Do that._

 _Whuh?_ Tony raised his head to him, looking so desperate and junked out at that moment, _Really, bro?_  

 _Yeah, really.  Lemme... get this... shit off._   Pickles squirmed, struggling to drag his underwear down his freckled legs, but felt too fucked up to get them off, collapsing back and panting.  His throat felt tight again.  Tony, who always handled smack better than him, quickly jumped into action, clawing them down his legs and ditching them onto the bed before dragging his own shorts off and freeing his hard cock. 

 _Oh SHIT, dude,_ said Pickles, eyes widening, sprawled in a mess of his copper lit hair in the low lamplight, as he’d been bang on the money.  Tony’s dick, erect, was pretty dang big.  His body felt like molten lead though, he was sure he wouldn’t feel any pain even if it was too big, and.. like... he couldn’t seem to be worried about it.  In fact, even as Tony spread his legs and knelt over him, the drooling, dark head of his dick rubbing against Pickles’ cunt, and Pickles’ arms draping around the bassist’s shoulders, he knew it was a terrible idea, especially without a rubber.  But all he could think about was how good it was gonna feel, how he was gonna wake up next to Tony at about four in the afternoon, and shoot up with him, and then be on stage by nine.

So he didn’t say a word and just fucking spread his pussy obscene with his fingers for the guy, and Tony fell over his body and squeezed it into him like a plunger down a fit, kissing him all over his shoulders and neck with his beautiful dark hair trailing over his chest.  Pickles could remember his fingers knotting into Tony’s shoulders, kissing his mouth messily as his mind flooded with an intoxicating wash of pleasure.  It was easy to say, you know, that it was the best thing you’d ever felt, that everything was the best you’d ever felt, but for real... for actual real, it was the best thing he’d ever felt in his life, fucking Tony on horse in that hotel room, the guy going for hours with his kisses and his big dick, beautiful skin pale in the low light and heavy breath, with Pickles’ hands on his cheeks and his legs curled around his hips.

So once was not enough.  It never, ever was.

Now Tony stared at the paperwork in front of him, arms folded over his pudgy chest, his eyes wide as he determined not to look at Pickles and his stupid blue suit and red cornrows, not even once, so pallid and guilty for suing him.  Putting him to all this trouble.  Thought Pickles, _betraying me._   You gave a dude a life, take him off the street, you gave him money and a job and fame and hell, even your stupid gay pussy, and all he did was fuck you, fuck you over, and give you a drug habit you’d never live down if you survived to a hundred.

“Let’s go to the last phrase, so to speak.  Can you read that for us?”

Pickles cleared his throat theatrically.

“ _Love is an injection_  
_And I shot it in my vein_  
_And it drove me outta my brain._

 _Gonna mainline that honey,_  
_Don’t ya think it pretty funny,_  
_What you love drives you insane.”_

Totally innocent.  The lawyer looked at him as he poured himself a glass of water from the jug on the desk before him.

“What is ‘mainlining’, Mr Pickles?” he asked, and Pickles rolled his lips over his teeth thoughtfully.

“Mm, it’s a thing ya do with injections, I guess.  That’s, uh, medical shit.  Slang.  Pretty sure,” he said, and tapped his fingers on the glass idly.  “It’s a metaphor.  Like, uh.  Injecting, uh, love.  A love injection.  Goes straight into ya heart, see.”

“I see.”

It wasn’t that Pickles had been in love with Tony, so to speak; love was an insane thing for Pickles, things got broken – bones, if you were unlucky.  Love was razorblades and rifle barrels.  He’d loved his ex, Evelyn, for a couple of months, and that was how he’d known for certain he wasn’t in love with Tony, the way that had burned through him and made him sick to his guts.  Love and grief, not very different.  What he had with Tony was more just, you know, temporary bliss.  Get loaded, chill out, fuck for hours.  Fucking sometimes into a coma, strung out in heaven in a hotel room; sometimes into a frenzy, clawing Tony’s trousers off of his body with twisted hands and then after, exploding onto stage all sex and reeking of it, of pussy and sweat and his own cum since Tony could never get over the edge, and thirsty for blood like he wanted to fuck them all, fuck the entire audience, fall into the crowd again and be torn to pieces.  No more Pickles.  Just bliss and a memory.  Fuck, that was beautiful.

In the end, it was Evelyn who ruined it.  Lasted a year or so before she came in the picture, another hiatus from the tour and a stunning girl they’d had talent scouted for the ‘Liquid Sunshine’ video.  The song Pickles had known, instantly, sitting on that girl’s couch on a rainy day in 1987, having no home, nowhere else to go, and a riff glittering out under his fingers on her shitty acoustic guitar; he’d known it would be a classic.  Cuz he’d been in love with her as well, loved her from the second they were crouched in her bedroom over a candle and her with a sewing needle, her hair like blonde lace over her shoulders, pushing that needle through his earlobe so he could look like Michael Monroe.  Too bad the world moved good people away from you, too bad he had to get rid of her before he pulled her down into his hatred and pain and his self-shredding, sabotaging bullshit.  She was probably happy somewhere else, with a nice guy, you know, well, he hoped.  But he’d known it’d be a classic cuz, under her love, yeah, the rain was like sunshine, and love was like a needle, and a riff could be so entirely full of it, of pain and love, you know.

He’d had this idea for the video from a short story he’d got hold of from a journo and friend, about a rock star whose girlfriend commits suicide cuz of all his excess, you know, and Pickles didn’t care about the money any more.  _Do whatever’s needed_.  A church in like, a cool field, was in his head, and he explained this; maybe there could be a wedding since there was a church, like the wedding the rock star and his girlfriend were supposed to have.  Snazz shredding up that love, pain, riff, in the field.  A big white piano in the Orpheum theatre and, get this, snakes on it.  Heaps of snakes, real live snakes.  And whaddaya know, they did it.

But they also asked him, well, who do ya wanna be marrying?  And it’d be real stupid to say Tony, even if that was kinda true.  So he’d thought about it, shot up, had a couple of stiff drinks, re-read the story.  And then described her to the casting agent.  Her, you know.  Needle girl.  Erin.  Laughing at himself on the inside, at how crazy he was, at how lost he was.  And whaddaya know, like with the crates of fucking snakes, they did it.

Evelyn – a stone fox.  He’d fallen in love with her so fast, too damn fast, all that gazing into her eyes and her in that foxy wedding dress and playing that love song over and over again, and when you acted something out enough you began to believe it. It had been insanity, the whole thing.  Tony had picked up on it quick and stopped making moves on him, and Pickles’ heroin use had quickly turned manic.  He shot up every day.  He shot up, then acted, then drank and talked to Evelyn just _constantly_ , just staring at her, _damn_.  When filming had wrapped up and Evelyn had returned to her life, he’d felt so empty he considered shooting himself once again.  It was amazing how fast things could turn, how desperately he realised he missed having love in his life, how gouging and awful his life appeared.  So he’d chased her, turned up at her Salt Lake apartment, standing under the stairs with a gun at his head as the rain poured down over him and screaming, _Evelyn, marry me!  Ya gotta marry me or I’m gonna die!_   Which apparently made for a convincing argument, because they’d gotten married in Vegas the very next day.

In the video, Tony was their best man.  In reality, Pickles hadn’t even thought of him.  In that beautiful country church, in his slacker tux and sneakers, Tony clasped Candynose’s hand and then he turned and walked out.  Pickles at the altar watching him leave, like he was walking into heaven.  Like he was turning his back on Snakes N’ Barrels.  Too bad life imitated art.  Too bad that was the truth.

“And the last part of that verse, Mr Pickles?” asked the lawyer, and Pickles wrinkled his nose weirdly.  Well, now he was going to hell, huh.  Still, he read.

 _“Love is an infection_  
_And she gives you the disease_  
_Then she hangs you up to dry._

 _I should have known better_  
_Said I wish I never met her_  
_Gonna leave her ‘fore I die.”_

Pickles sniffed.  “So, ya know.  With that kinda attitude.  I’m sure if I _was_ a junkie, which I ain’t sayin I was, I’d be off it soon anyway.”

“Right,” said the lawyer, unconvinced.

Evelyn had not, in reality, been like Erin at all.  Living with her in the big LA mansion he’d bought her (round the hill from Wu West, shit!  You knew you were doing well when NWA came cruising down your street, you know?) was just a constant nightmare.  He’d loaded up to escape from the awful truth, and without Tony to temper him, always shot up way too much again.  The fights were legendary, some of the biggest ones he’d ever had.  He remembered just a blur of cowering in the closet, off his face on smack, staring into the dark and listen to her yelling, and fighting with her, dragging the phone out of the wall, wrestling off her slaps, standing on the balcony and chucking her crystalware piece by piece over the balustrade to shatter around the swimming pool.  I mean, what the fuck kind of behaviour was that?  RZA would’ve been so disappointed in him, right?  So, soon as he’d got a chance, he’d ended it.  Hence, ex.  No more Evelyn.  Back to the studio.  Do another album.  Fight with the others.  Wash it all away with drugs.

When Pickles had come crawling back, Tony and the others were deep into the heroin.  Pickles remembered sitting in a hotel room, playing solitaire on the floor surrounded by bottles of liquor and watching Tony out of the corner of his eye as the guy snuck the needle into his own balls.  I mean, holy _fuck_.  That was some next level shit.  The very next night, though, Pickles found himself back in Tony’s arms and sweating all over as the guy slid the needle into Pickles’ swollen dick, trembling out of control with his toes curled in pain and his eyes rolling straight back into his head.  Once the junk had been injected, Tony sucked him off, drawing the blood out of the pinhole wound with Pickles frozen around him like a petrified lover, his fingers wound into the bassist’s dark hair and never actually cumming.  There was no more best thing he’d ever felt, instead a heart attack of grief and the sluggish, clear poison boiling up through his veins like antifreeze, tightening his throat, killing him with every stroke of Tony’s broad tongue against the base of his little dick.  When Tony fingered him like that, he felt like he was being pulled inside out.

He was stretched between the two extremes.  Heart attacks, and breaking bottles, holding them to Tony’s throat.  The new heroin on the street was dark shit, a black tar angel, and Pickles’ reliance on her was all-consuming.  She put paranoia into his head and shakes into his hands; if he was without her for even a day he fell apart, trembling and crying and unable to understand how he’d come to this dead end in his life, a dumbfuck junkie surrounded by dumbfuck junkies, and the music sounded like shit, and all he wanted to listen to any more was heavy hip hop and metal, all that could make him feel anything.  The others were incompetent on their instruments, said too much to the press as Pickles withdrew cuz... cuz cameras robbed him of his soul.  Like the one filming him across the courtroom.  Fuck.

In the witness box, Pickles screwed up his eyes and rubbed them with a fist, yearning after it again.  Nope, no.  The naltrexone took care of the highs, the methadone took care of the withdrawals.  He’d never have what he had had again.  And he’d never have Snakes N’ Barrels again.  It was gone the moment they’d sat down around the studio coffee table, just as they were finishing mastering the last few singles.  Or rather Pickles had.  Because Pickles had done everything, with Candynose and Tony sometimes not even showing their face in the place for days.  Pickles and Snazz had tracked everything on ‘Friend of the Devil’; he hadn’t even asked the others if they wanted to cover it, because what did it fucking matter?  He tracked all the drums and bass and piano anyway.  Apparently that was an issue, though, because they sat down and pointed it out, and Pickles pointed back that he’d been re-recording Candynose’s drum parts since before the last album, and Tony couldn’t even play bass onstage anymore – if it wasn’t for Pickles having a fast thumb and a down-tuned top string, they would have lost their record deal by now.

 _Well I lit up from Reno_... Pickles had been dropping hints for way too long.  He was gonna cut loose.  Get clean.  Start out over again.

He looked Tony in the eye and told him he was fired.  Candynose had jumped to his defence, bitching Pickles out as Tony just sat there, shell shocked, and the drummer snapped and whined about how Pickles was as big a junkie as any of them, how he screwed over everyone he met, how he’d as easily stab someone in the back as he would shake hands with them.  How he was a money grubbing, queer-ass cokefiend motherfucker and just a fucking child, man!  Turning on them like this, like a fucking dog, after all they’d done for him.  Maybe he could still play but maybe heroin turned him evil.  What about just last week, putting that glass through Howie’s hand?  The guy had thirteen stitches. 

Pickles twined his fingers together in front of him, resting his arms on his denim-clad knees, and said, _Okay then, you’re fired too._

_What the fuck?!  Why?!_

_For standin’ up for Antonio.  You’re fired._

There was screaming.  _Pickles, your life is a joke, it’s a fucking joke, you’re a mess, and you’re only twenty-three!  Where the fuck do you think you’ll be without us?!_   Pickles had looked away from them, waiting it out coolly.  He might have been young but he knew when someone was about to fuck him over, and determined to stick them first.  Candynose had grabbed Tony and dragged him out, not another word from the guy.  Snazz had hung around for a little bit to finish his drink and his cigarette, then placed down his empty bourbon glass in the silence, Pickles staring down at the ashtray, and said, _Reckon I’m gonna go too, y’know._

 _Figures._ Pickles tched at him but left it.  He supposed it did look a bit like he’d turned out of nowhere, if you were an outsider like Snazz was, and so it wasn’t a surprise he was a little paranoid.  He didn’t really mean it, thought Pickles, and expected him to come back but, you know what?  He didn’t.  And then the lawsuit had reached Howie, and within a few months, both Candynose and Snazz had attached their names to it as well.  That was the thing about lightin’ up from Reno.  You had to expect the hounds.

There had been an overdose; Howie got him to the rehab, kicking and screaming but he’d gotten him there.  That was why, see, managers were okay.  They still looked out for you even when you sucked their dicks in the men’s room at the Dolphin in the early days, so long as they were on a pay cheque.  There had been methadone, and Pickles pulled out all his piercings and started dressing the way he’d wanted to, in backwards caps and baggy jeans rather than scarves and eyeliner.  He got the cornrows and liked the way they made him look like he wasn’t going bald.  _When this is over_ , said Howie, standing on his pristine balcony overlooking the swimming pool and the valley with a glass of whiskey in his hand, _I suggest you get the hell outta dodge, Pickles._   And Pickles had never heard better advice in his whole damn life.

Now it was almost over.  Let them interrogate him; he’d still been justified in firing Antonio and he’d fight them tooth and nail til the bitter end.  Then he was outta here.  Got a yacht with his name on it and a stupid parrot shirt waiting for him in Miami. 

At the plaintiff’s table, Tony raised his head, stealing a glance at Pickles as the lawyer questioned him about an old Bob Dylan cover and a bunch of letters he’d written to a lady in 1992, and Pickles sneering coldly and twitching in his soft blue suit.  Pickles caught that glance and looked straight back at him with the devil’s dog eyes, methadone crazy, and as soon as he did Tony lowered his gaze to the desk, cowering away in fear.  Never fuck your bandmates.  Pickles looked back at the lawyer, smiling cordially.  He was going to win this case, no doubt in his mind.  Then straight to Miami, cigars and Caipirinhas on the beach.  It was gonna be bliss, pal.  Absolute bliss.

But in fact, eight months of interrogation and paperwork and alienation later, he settled it out of court with the boys, and had to sell his house just to pay them off.

And in less than two weeks, he was vomiting down his NWA shirt on a Miami street corner, face on the pavement, living off royalties, wasted on Coronas and sweating into his own sneakers again wondering what the hell he did wrong.  His cornrows peeling off the front of his hairline and barely no one recognising his broke ass.  There had to be more to life than this.  There had to be.  One more chapter.  Please, God.  Give him just one more.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos always appreciated.
> 
> Sneks illustrated some scenes with Pickles and Tony in this fic in [watercolour](https://sneks-n-bickles.tumblr.com/post/160705564006/you-should-have-never-gone-to-hollywood-started) \- really stunning.


End file.
